The identification of objects that are relatively fungible, but possess minute yet important nuances or details, can be a difficult, tedious and time consuming. As will be readily recognized by those familiar with such enterprises, a failure to accurately identify such objects with regularity can have unintended or undesirable consequences.
This difficulty of identification causes additional difficulties when counting, inventorying, distributing and retailing such fungible objects. These difficulties may occur throughout the entire supply chain for these objects or products—from manufacturing through distribution and into retailing. The key industry is one such industry in which the relatively fungible nature of the products leads to difficulties in identification, counting, inventorying, distributing, and retailing.
The key industry supply chain includes many “nodes” at which key or key blanks change hands. For example, keys are handled by manufacturers, truckers, customs agents, shippers, wholesalers, and retailers, many of which may be located overseas and often handle hundreds, if not thousands, of types of keys or key blanks. Many of these keys or key blanks are not readily distinguishable from other similar keys or key blanks, which adds complexity and cost to the supply chain. At each node in the supply chain, many administrative tasks must be completed, such as inventorying and counting the keys in a shipment. At each node, transmittal and bill of lading documents must be reviewed and created. Currently, these processes are accomplished via expensive, inaccurate manual counts and human visual reviews. The current processes may result in higher than required safety stocks, stock outs, lost sales, miscut keys and other unnecessary expenses.
Utility patent application Ser. No. 10/633,933, entitled OBJECT IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM, which is incorporated herein in full and attached hereto as Appendix A, presents solutions for some common issues that arise in the duplication of certain fungible keys at retail locations in the supply chain. However, there still remains a need to develop additional solutions for duplication issues and for the many other issues presented by the movement of products with a fungible nature, such as keys, through the supply chain.